Work Disrupted. Jeff Schwartz
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where I taught math and science in a village with no running water or electricity, a village that was a day's walk to a road. Two years later, in the summer of 1985, I was a summer associate in corporate finance on Park Avenue in New York. Somewhere between Nepal and New York City, I'd been lucky to have been exposed to vastly different faces of the human experience.
What I continue to learn, and what I hope my daughters are learning, is that how we frame the world, what we think is relevant and possible, shapes what we can do and what we actually do. New times and new conditions create new opportunities. Unless we reshape our views—our time horizons, relationships, speed—we will miss opportunities. For us as individuals, and as organizations and communities, Covid-19 has indeed been an accelerator to the future. But the future was already underway, with opportunities for people and machines to work together, and careers composed of chapters of reinvention. To embrace all that's possible, a new mindset—a growth mindset—is critical.
The concept of a growth mindset, developed by psychologist Carol Dweck, speaks to our capacity for change and growth. She contrasts a growth mindset with a limiting view, what she calls a fixed mindset. Her research demonstrates that much of what we think we understand about ourselves and what we can do comes from our mindset. This can either propel us forward or prevent us from fulfilling our potential. According to Dweck, whether or not we're aware of our mental models, they can have a profound effect on our skill acquisition, personal relationships, professional success, and many other dimensions of life. People with a growth mindset believe that their most fundamental abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work. This view builds a love of learning and a resilience that will serve us well in the future world of work. People with fixed mindsets believe they're good or bad at something based on their inherent nature, closing out the possibility that they can acquire new skills and capabilities. Similarly, editor and anthropologist Gillian Tett teaches us that the way we label and categorize the world indeed influences what we think we can do.
Our Challenge
As Covid-19 proves to be a storm hovering for longer than many of us expected, I remind myself that it has been during times of disruption and stress that we've seen some of the biggest changes in our economy and society. We're living through a period of pivoting and acceleration. Covid-19 has dramatically challenged us to think about the future that we want to create. Reflecting upon the future of work over the last half dozen years, I've been particularly mindful of the fact that, all too often, we've viewed the future of work as a way to produce the same work, using the same work processes, with little bits of new technology thrown in. However, the real opportunities lie not in doing the same things that we're doing today, only a little bit better and a little bit faster. The real opportunities lie in the exploration and journey that allow us to discover how we can do things differently. How can we produce different results with more impact and more meaning? How can we create new combinations of human–machine teams reinforcing the unique capabilities of each? How can we create more flexible ways of working for ourselves and members of the workforce? How can we create workplaces that combine our ability to work virtually and in person? And, finally, how we can create a future of work that not only creates economic value but reflects our social and communal values as well? This book is an attempt to explore these possibilities and advance this dialog.
The fundamental question Work Disrupted raises, is what lens are we choosing as we look ahead? Are we viewing the future as an extension of a predictable past, or are we viewing the future as a broad set of new opportunities that will reflect whatever we think is possible? In other words, are we viewing the future through a fixed or growth mindset? Are we doing more of the same, only faster and cheaper (fixed), or are we creating and innovating? If I were asking this question in 1910 or 1920, I might be asking if you plan to work for the railroad or for the upstart automotive companies.
Our Opportunity
In these pages I share some of what I've experienced and reflected upon, acting as a twenty-first-century Sherpa, as we navigate the accelerating future of work—or the beginning of what I think of as the Human Era. The era has been labeled the Anthropocene, the current geological age, viewed as a period in which human activity has been the leading influence on our climate and our environment. One of the debates coming to the fore that economists have been having for many decades is the interplay of technological innovation and creative destruction. Increasingly, when I look at the history of economic growth, I see that it has been in the process of entrepreneurship, innovation, and creative disruption that we've actually pushed forward what it means to be human, and to create meaning and impact.
I wrote this book to share my view that the future of work, a source of fear for so many, is actually about the opportunities, the resilience, and the growth that we can leverage to do things differently, to establish new priorities and new patterns, and to create a new order in our own lives, and in our communities. Work disrupted is in no way about things stopping. It reflects the continual movement and evolution of how we work. Disruption is hard. It challenges us to change how we frame and prepare for the future, reminding us that a preferred future requires new mindsets—an openness to new ways of working.
The intersection of the future of work and what we're now experiencing as the Covid-19 era represents a fault line in our lives, a uniquely instructive moment. We're invited to reimagine how we work, our educational institutions, and how we build our careers, our companies, and our communities. Adopting new mindsets and building new capabilities may be one of the critical challenges of our time. My hope as you read this book is that you gain a better sense of the opportunities that await you, the resilience that will serve you, and the growth paths that you can pursue in your own life to create, innovate, and thrive.
Jeff Schwartz
New York
August, 2020
CHAPTER 1 From Fear to Growth : Mindsets and Playbooks for Twenty-first-century Careers and Work
When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not yet ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back.
—Paulo Coelho, novelist1
When the coronavirus pandemic took root in the United States, we entered a time machine to the future.2 Practically overnight, people in industries that had restricted telecommuting found themselves crawling out of bed and dialing into Zoom conference calls from their couch. For many teachers, bankers, lawyers, even NASA aerospace engineers, the coronavirus crisis was a trial run for remote work.3 With most of the country under orders to shelter in place, many business leaders pivoted on a dime to reimagine products, reassign workers, reshape supply chains, and reconfigure operations to join the heated race to save lives. Near the top of the critical list of needs was the demand for ventilators, potentially hundreds of thousands of ventilators. In an unprecedented move, Ford and General Motors shut down car production and went into the ventilator production business.4
Overhauling production and ramping up that production beyond anything your company has ever done before are feats of magic that business leaders have known they would be expected to perform in the future world of work. When Anne-Marie Slaughter, the chief executive of New America, said the coronavirus exposed “an opportunity to make the changes we knew we were going to have to make eventually,” and also “deep fissures and failures in our culture,” she captured both the sense of inevitability and vulnerability that many business leaders were experiencing.5